Reviews tagging 'Car accident'

Revival by Stephen King

18 reviews

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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dark reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

A great story, though not quite as horrific as King's other novels. Still had me desperate to know how it ended, though!

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adventurous dark mysterious reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

3.0 out of 5 stars

The last 10% was the only slightly scary part and even that wasn’t that terrifying compared to some of the other books he’s written. The rest was interesting fiction but not what I was totally hoping for from this.

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dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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dark mysterious slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

How was this published in 2014 and this man STILL uses slurs???

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dark sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark mysterious tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark mysterious sad fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I might be overrating this one, but I gotta be me and I can’t help but love it when Stephen King combines slice-of-life melodrama with The Unspeakable Horrors. Most people have reviewed this book as slow-paced, which I get given the amount of time dedicated to the minutiae of Jamie’s childhood and adolescence and how long it takes the actual horror elements to seep in, but I still couldn’t put it down. Ended up finishing the 14 hour audio book in 4 days. King has his manifold flaws, but he knows how to grab you.

That all being said, the usual King caveats still apply here. He’s Weird about race, cannot resist fatphobia, and… struggles with realistically depicting women as fully dimensional human beings, although with the first person narration (a relatively rare choice for him), some of this could charitably be attributed as characterization of Jamie.

Again, the real strength of this book is as a cosmic horror story that actually feels grounded in material reality. I’ve always struggled with finding the “horror” in Lovecraft’s work (other than the horrifying racism), where the bloodless narrators and their “you just had to be there, trust me it was sososo much scarier than anything you could imagine” narration leaves me at an alienated remove. King might occasionally *over-elaborate* his horror elements to the point of silliness, but it just works for me when it’s grounded in world that feels painfully real. The ending is one of the bleakest King’s ever written, and it provides a kind of existential horror that’s stuck with me.

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